


with my eyes closed (i am leaving it all behind)

by tousled



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Marriage Proposal, Marriage proposal refusal, No dragons, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, post httyd3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 06:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19785043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tousled/pseuds/tousled
Summary: Old Berk smelt like the ocean spray, and the deep set smell of fish, and woodsmoke. Like dragons lived there, scales and fire, salty and fishy. New Berk will never ever smell like that.





	with my eyes closed (i am leaving it all behind)

**Author's Note:**

> oh wow!!!!! i wrote this in one night but it rlly wanted to be written. song for this fic is running if you call my name by Haim. Title is from it :) 
> 
> For everyone who loves the soft, gentle fond tuffstrid, for everyone who loves Uncle Finn like me.

  
  


The air is different on New Berk. Astrid can’t pick up exactly what it is, standing on the edge. It’s easily defensible, but it’s not  _ home _ , not like Old Berk, not even like The Edge. It doesn’t feel like home, it doesn’t look like home and it doesn’t  _ smell _ like home. 

(Old Berk smelt like the ocean spray, and the deep set smell of fish, and woodsmoke. Like  _ dragons  _ lived there, scales and fire, salty and fishy. New Berk will never ever smell like that. 

New Berk won’t ever smell like home.) 

The tumultuous cliffs - the straight edges and wild winds biting at the rocks - make her stomach do flips in a way heights haven’t for a long time. It took weeks, months, to cut down enough trees to make a tenuous ladder systems so they could be connected to the sea again. Astrid looks out over the edge, at the blue and wonders if their dragons are really happy under the ground. 

“What do you see out there?” Tuff calls, a yard away from the edge. He’s too scared of the height to come any closer, no matter how many times he checks on her, no matter that he used to ride a dragon. It’s not the same anymore. 

“Nothing,” Astrid says. Sometimes, it’s him that’s here first, the most southerly tip of the island and she knows he’s doing the same thing. 

Somewhere south, is their dragons. 

(Tomorrow, Hiccup is going to get down on one knee in front of the entire village in their newly built Great Hall. Gobber will cry, big blubbery tears and say something about Stoick and Astrid will feel  _ sick _ . No one will say anything about what Uncle Finn would have thought, like maybe all of his memory is just the hazy days in the kitchen, stuck in her breastbone and the wood of the Hofferson hut back on Old Berk. 

Astrid’s always second place. She’ll stand there, the entire village looking at her for some kind of peace, a distraction no better than before, and she’ll want to scream. Who is she? Who  _ is  _ she without an enemy, without a friend? 

Who is she without dragons?) 

“Run away with me,” Astrid says, breathless. The wind steals it, buffeting her, the idea steals it too. 

“Okay,” Tuff agrees, and when Astrid turns from the sea to look at him properly his face is open and earnest and she wants to kiss him. “I’ll have to bring Ruff though, and probably our things. Is there room for a stuffed yak? I think it’ll fit.” 

“That’s fine,” she smiles, stepping away from the edge to touch his arm, “we can bring whatever we want.” 

It’s hypothetical; a dream sillier than any other bunch of disjointed thoughts but it burns magnesium hot deep inside Astrid’s chest. She could, for real. Take Tuff’s hand, and manage the rickety ladder system and help themselves to an empty boat and leave. 

“What do you want to bring?” Tuff asks, and Astrid  _ wants  _ to be close enough to count every freckle, every speck of colour in his eyes. She wants to close her eyes, to touch his face, to see his surprise when she kisses him. She wants too many conflicting, mutually exclusive things. 

“Just you is enough.” She says. Tuff immediately turns the colour of a boiled crayfish. She drops her hand from his arm to hold his hand, just for a moment. 

He doesn’t know he’s enough, just as he is. It’s a damned travesty. 

“But I guess clothes, and rations.” She adds a moment later, squeezing Tuff’s hand. “Weapons and probably a couple of nets or a cray pot.” 

“Those are good things,” he says, voice quiet. He wants to say more, Astrid can feel the words stifled in the air. There’s probably thousands more, explanations upon explanations but the moment is ruined by Hiccup’s voice reaching them from further down the cliff edge. Tuff drops her hand like they’re doing something wrong, stepping away. 

(“No thanks,” Astrid will say. 

Hiccup won’t say anything, gobsmacked. The entire Great Hall will be so silent you’d be able to hear a mouse stealing a bread crumb. Astrid will hardly believe it’s a room full of Vikings.  _ Drink your mead, be merry, _ she’ll think,  _ your chief is just getting turned down _ .

“It was a distraction of an idea before,” Astrid will say, “and it’ll be a distraction now. It’ll be a distraction tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that one.” 

“I don’t understand.” Hiccup will say, an open ended sentence, a question and a statement all in one. 

“Do you really want to get married now? When everyone’s miserable? To distract from the fact we all lost our dragons?” Astrid will demand. She probably won’t want Hiccup’s answer. 

“Maybe this isn’t the place to be having this conversation,” Eret will suggest, slapping a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder and turning him so he can’t see the gawking of the entire village.) 

“What are you two doing here?” Hiccup asks, barrelling on before either of them could answer. “Ruff has been looking everywhere for you Tuff.” 

“Birdwatching,” Tuff says. The only bird Astrid can pick is a chicken. Some sort of sea bird is using the updraft of the cliff to climb higher and higher in the air in front of them. 

“I miss Stormfly.” Astrid replies, unafraid of the conversation. It doesn’t go anywhere. 

“We all miss our dragons.” Hiccup says diplomatically. Astrid knows. Of course everyone  _ does _ , but sometimes she wants to scream, to stare into the wind until her eyes are watering.

“What does Ruff want?” She asks, and she doesn’t think about how if she jumped she’d hit the water like it was solid rock, no one there to catch her. Hiccup was the worst of them at it; does the flight suit give him nightmares now? 

“Something about a Thorston Challenge?” Hiccup shrugs, like the twins haven’t gone on about that before. 

(Hiccup will try to take Astrid’s hand when they step out of the Great Hall together. Astrid will think about Tuff’s warm palm against her own. She won’t take Hiccup’s hand. 

“Am I second best?” Astrid will ask and Hiccup will stare at her, flummoxed.

“What?” He will breathe out, confusion deep in the curve of his brow and Astrid will remember how he sounded when she was temporarily blinded. She will close her eyes. 

“I feel like I’m a patch to solve your problems, no matter what they are. Too many dragons, not enough dragons. Will you ever marry me because you simply  _ want  _ to, not just to distract yourselves from other things?” 

“I do want to marry you.” Hiccup will say. He will sound confused, voice high and nasally, and Astrid will think about waking up to that every morning. 

Astrid will believe him. She will know he’s speaking his truth, but she’s right too. She  _ is  _ second best, and she always was. She was fine with it, until she was the only option. 

“I don’t want to get married to you.” Astrid will say.) 

“Oh,” Tuff says, “I have to go.” And he leaves them standing on the cliff’s edge. Astrid looks at Hiccup, really looks at him, at his tired eyes and the slump of his shoulder and for a moment, she thinks,  _ oh you’re really not being fair.  _

“It’s better,” Hiccup says. 

“Sure.” Astrid replies, absolutely not convinced. She’d let go at the time, wholeheartedly believing in him, in his ideas, but now it just feels like giving up. 

“I mean it,” Hiccup starts, taking in a deep breath, “the dragons are safe now from everyone who’s trying to hurt them. We did the right thing -“ 

“Hiccup, shut up.” Astrid pushes his shoulder, hard enough to cause a misstep, Hiccup falling back an arm’s length and it churns in Astrid’s stomach. She didn’t mean for that, not for it to be so hard. 

It’s just, it doesn’t matter. Astrid misses her best friend, and she wonders if a land beneath the ground is  _ worth _ it. She would have fought to her last breath. It doesn’t matter, the moment is about feeling her feelings, not discussing reasons and logic and  _ why can’t he just read the room.  _

(She’ll leave him standing on the Great Hall steps to walk back to the southernmost cliff edge of New Berk. 

It’ll be an hour, or two at the most, before will Tuff join her. She knows he will, he always does, he feels the same thing as deeply as she does. Sometimes, he just stares at the sky too, hoping. 

“That was brave.” Tuff will say, because he thinks she’s brave and courageous and wonderful, and he’s too much.

“It was silly,” Astrid will reply, “but it was true.” 

They will stand there, in the dying embers of the day and Astrid will look at the pinks and oranges splaying over his face.  _ Run away with me _ , she’ll think,  _ run away with me and love me like I love you. _ )

“I’m cold.” Astrid says. She isn’t. “I’m going to go see what sort of Thorston Challenge is going on, you coming?” 

“I’ve got other chief duties to undertake,” Hiccup replies, reaching out to touch Astrid’s hand. For some reason, it reminds Astrid of the week they tried to convince Stoick chiefing was easier on the back of a dragon, of Thornado. She wonders if Bing, Bang and Boom are grown up now, if they’re ‘safe’ too. 

“Alright, take care.” Astrid says, shifting away befriend the touch on her hand can be anything more. 

Turning away from the water feels like turning away from the fight again. Her heart pounds, throat aching and she wishes Hiccup didn’t deal with this by pretending everything is  _ fine _ . Even to her, ever second best. 

At the end of the day she goes home with her mama and curls up in her mama’s arms in front of the fire. It crackles and jumps, like a wild thing in the grate, like it wants to greet the burn tucked away behind her breastbone. 

“I know it’s hard for  _ everyone, _ ” she says, her mama stroking her hair soothing, “I know it’s hard for him too, him  _ especially _ , but what do we have in common besides our dragons? What if I was just distracted by how he changed our world? I love him, but what if it’s not like how he wants?” 

“You’re not a prize sweetheart,” her mama says, tucking Astrid behind her chin, “and you never have to do anything you don’t want to. Your Uncle Finn laughed when your grandma said to sign you up for embroidery lessons, you had an axe in your when you could  _ walk _ . We’re Fearless Hoffersons, he’d say, nobody could tell us what to do.” 

Astrid doesn’t feel fearless right now. She wonders what Uncle Finn would think of all this. He never got to see peace with dragons, of saving Old Berk from the Flightmare. She thinks maybe he would have had a Deadly Nadder too, or maybe a Timberjack. 

“Here I am, ungodly beast, Fearless Finn Hofferson,” Astrid murmurs, into the space between her mama’s braid and her neck. Her mama squeezes her tight, pecking a kiss to her forehead. 

“Fearless Astrid Hofferson.” She says. 

(They’ll stay out there, in the dark even though Tuff will be scared, until they’re too cold to stay another moment. Astrid will take his hand again, and lead him expertly back to her mama’s hut and she will feel  _ fearless _ in the moment. 

The fire will still be cracking in the grate, and she’ll hold Tuff’s hands to warm them herself. She will want to kiss his cheeks warm, press close, share body heat. She won’t, not yet. 

“You two want something warm to drink?” Her mama will ask, hand still on the stair well. 

“Yes please Mama,” Astrid will say, and Tuff will let her keep his hands until they get the warmed yak’s milk promised. 

“Thanks Mama Hoff,” he’ll say, face pressed into the mug, voice softened. Her mama will look at Astrid, eyes soft.  _ Fearless Astrid Hofferson _ , she will think.) 

And everything will fall into place (“- will you marry me -“ “no thanks,” “- I am just a distraction -“) just like the name settles around her shoulders. Fearless Astrid Hofferson, living in a place her uncle could never believe, with a story that sounds fake and a future that’s unknown. 

(It’s not completely unknown. She might not be a warrior fighting dragons, a warrior befriending dragons, a warrior saving dragons, but - 

Tuff will meet her at the southernmost tip of New Berk every day, every week, every month. She will look at him, at his freckles, at his burn line, and think,  _ no, not unknown. _

His will mouth taste sweet, like the yak butter parfait that a few people had for dessert, and the little whine he makes, desperate, will taste even sweeter.) 

  
  
  



End file.
